I'm not a big fan, but there's no question that the guy could write, and that he changed the way the language was used in novels. Thematically he's pretty shallow, but his narrative power is excellent, his dialogue is very strong, and his use of the language is superlative.

100% bruiser. a true literary boxer. the kids don't read him now, b/c they have playstations and no brains. but he was the greatest for so long. i wish i could drink with Papa now. there's no one good to talk to about books in modern america.

****in the style of Hemingway**** he's bad, overrated. makes me want to shoot things. big things. little things. everything. makes me want to be like him; shoot myself.

The inventor of the modern prose style, and one of the finest 20th century writers, bar none. In many ways the opposite of Faulkner, he was a champion of little words, and could do more in a few short sentences than many writers could do in entire chapters.

Revolutionized the way writers communicate.

Hemmingway is exciting if you're an adolescent, but he's tediously boring to grown ups.

His shotgun saved us all from more horrible works. GO SUICIDE!!

I can't believe he's #42. I love his books they are all so real and amazingly written.

Here is a man that really lived, hard and strong. I know he was sexist, but boy he felt and he made you feel with him.

My favorite author of all time. Grows better with age: the older you get, the better the works become. So deceptively simple, so beautiful, so heart-rending and poignant and playful. His four best (For Whom, Sun Also, Farewell, and Old Man) are among the four best of any fictional novelist ever. You could say Dickens had four as good but Dickens was a different beast. Faulkner too. Hemingway at his best is incomparable (although I wish he had been alive long enough to edit True At First Light (sorry EH)).

Mgreg said it much better than I could!!!

A misogynist, sexist pig. . .and he never met an adjective he liked, but had some decent stories like "The Hills Have White Elephants." At least he lived the life that he wrote about. . .many artists live vicariously through their art. Hemingway lived and wrote about his thoughts and experiences posthumously.

makes u think sometimes!

Communist Scum!

Warped, but I'm glad I read them...all of them.

Self centered scumbag who was full of himself. During the war wrote more about himself (while he was comfortably 50 miles behind the front as a 'war' correspondent) than about the men doing all the fighting. Overrated and loathsome.

My favorite. I love Hemingway's short stories, particularly "Snows of Kilimanjaro" and "The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber". Also, "For Whom the Bell Tolls" and "Farewell to Arms" are excellent novels. Wrote with amazing elegence. He was able to put so much meaning in every sentence.

I find Heminway's writing precise and to the point. He puts what he knows out on the table and leaves you to fill in the emotional aspects. Everyone can get something out of reading Hemingway, even if it is just the enjoyment of a good story.

I like Hemmingway’s short stories but I do not care for his novels. Although his novels have great human-interest themes, he wanders in his writing. There are usually whole sections that could be removed and never affect the plot or the overall narrative. Having some understanding of his drinking and mental depression periods, it seems there were sections within his novels he simply wrote for the sake of writing.

His books are too long and confusing for the average reader. Yes, they are classic and mentioned a lot, but they are extremly long and at times boring.

Politically correct readings of EH, from a post-90s perspective, miss the point so widely as to be laughable. It's not that he was politically correct. It's that, in view of what he was truly trying to express, he couldn't have cared less. The world he wrote about didn't have time for the kind of yuppie psychological luxuries that people use to make themselves feel better. His world was torn by massive conflicts, most of which he participated in (on the right side of the conflict), and he expressed the effects of that world-in-conflict on the average person better than any 20th century writer has ever done.To criticise him from a viewpoint fashionable 40 years after his death is silly. He was fully alive, and responsive to, his own turbulent times.

Ernest Hemingway's best writing was done in the short story form. I highly recommend The Complete Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway. Especially A Very Short Story and On the Quai at Smyrna. Admittedly his female characters are weak, but I think most males identify with his characters and the period in history when many men acted as Hemingway wrote. I consider him to be the greatest writer of the 20th Century.

He is one of the biggest men I know in the world. Lets say he is not Ernest, but ERNEST. But he is not one of the biggest authors I know because always in his books- such as Old Man and the Sea- nothing happens. When you read his works, you always are waiting for something important, but nothing really important happens.

If you are having trouble sleeping at night, just pick up a copy of any of Papa Hemingway's books. He lacks true imagination. He may have been a world traveler, but wordly he was not. His stories seem to be a psychological examination of himself, just pick up any of his books and you will find a male loner(Hemingway) in search of something, usually romance. His characters are arrogant, just as I think he might have been.

He is a great writer. Ever since I could read I have been reading his works. I would have to say that my favorite book is "The Sun Also Rises". Great reading. He had such an impact. Even though he wasn't appreciated in his own time he, in my opinion, is one of the greatest writers of all time.

overrated puffery

I've always been a big fan of Hemingway, and at least four of his books are among my all-time favorites: For Whom the Bell Tolls, Old Man & the Sea, A Farewell to Arms, and The Sun Also Rises. His understated emotion, clean and simple language, and economy of words create a unique and powerful writing style. But I also recognize that he can go too far. His prose can almost become a parody of itself, and his overblown ego can intrude on his stories. But can you really read Old Man & the Sea and not be convinced that there was a unique depth (no pun intended) to this man? And can you read For Whom the Bell Tolls without being forced to admit that Hemingway is a master story-teller? And don't forget to check out his short stories. A Clean, Well-Lighted Place is one of the best I've ever read.

Incredibly depressing, and usually without a point.

I am a big fan of Ernest Hemingway. Old man and the sea was great. He is so simple. I want to read more of Hemingway's stuff.

hi, he is good

Over-Rated.

Captured a complex man's simple view of life.

An incredible storyteller. He is very economic with his words, but makes them count. Like all great writers, he makes you acknowledge universal truths which most of like to sweep under the table, but no one does it the way he could. His sparse style carries penetrating insights, which connect with the reader almost silently like a well-swung blunt instrument.

Hemingway is a master of the short story, but frankly, his serious writing has little more in it than the best travel journalism written today. Concise and lucid rather than beautiful, he writes a good adventure story but his politically incorrect attitudes towards women and towards other religions jar the modern ear somewhat.

Hemingway in his search for the meaning of life finds mostly despair & loneliness, something to relate to everyone